Re: Gnome 2.6: What were you thinking?
- From: "Franco Catrin L." <fcatrin tuxpan com>
- To: jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>
- Cc: gnome-devel-list gnome org, Ingo Ruhnke <grumbel gmx de>, "Manuel Amador \(Rudd-O\)" <amadorm usm edu ec>, "John \(J5\) Palmieri" <johnp martianrock com>, Andy Ross <andy plausible org>, GNOME Desktop Hackers <desktop-devel-list gnome org>
- Subject: Re: Gnome 2.6: What were you thinking?
- Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 18:04:00 -0400
El jue, 13-05-2004 a las 17:18, jamie escribió:
> On Thu, 2004-05-13 at 21:33, John (J5) Palmieri wrote:
>
> > >
> > > Well, quite a few people don't think that was a 'very good idea'.
> > And quite a few people do. Really any change like this is going to have
> > people who love it and people who hate it. Thats just life. Should we
> > just freeze the desktop where it is right now and never make a single
> > change? The thing I don't get is what the argument is about.
>
> The big problem is that spatial mode is on by default and the default
> left click pops up new windows. Therefore for your Joe average user who
> only left clicks at things he/she will quickly end up with a cluttered
> mess of windows on the screen.
Only and only if he/she has a deep directory hierarchy
An average user just need to go to Documents, Music, Network, CDrom, DVD
and that sort of _places_. In that case browsing to /mnt/cdrom or
browsing to /home/user/download/thisweek/music doesn't make sense
If you think about open a lot of windows because of the need of
traversing directories then you are thinking about browsing and not
about spatial mode. Most advanced users use deep folders, like a the
file organization of a software proyect for example, but for an average
user, that level of organization is only noise.
> It would have been safer to make browse the default and spatial as
> optional cause I'm quite concerned that companies who are looking at
> Gnome to replace their windows boxes might be put off by spatial mode's
> heavy clutter (and after all the negative press they are bound to look
> very closely at this feature).
A new user will have an empty desktop and home directory and will put
his/her things in appropiate _places_ as he/she wants. No need for deep
hierarchies.
Have you seen that most windows users put a lot of files/folders in
their desktop?
> Using spatial in an efficient manner to
> avoid this problem is not intuitive for most such users (and they would
> need some training to use it right).
I don't think so. Just think of putting things here and there. Higher
level of classifications, or locating things like /mnt/cdrom may need
training instead
> Then using it correctly also has problems. If I middle click folders
> then I sometimes get very disorientating results. By not reusing the
> existing window and instead popping up a window on the other side of the
> screen with a different size and shape I find It less efficient cause my
> focus, attention and mouse pointer is located over the window that gets
> closed and having to readjust wastes time and annoys me.
It's because you are used to browser your files, not to open/activate
them.
What if I say that I get very disoriented when my documents contents are
replaced by the thrash contents in the same window?
> A browser view
> would always be more efficient in this regard.
>
> As for ease of use, I dont see anything in spatial mode which makes
> things easier.
So you should use browse mode instead
> If tree views in browser mode are a problem for some
> users then my tabbed nautilus proposal would solve that (the tabs in
> nautilus would represent the directory hierarchy of the current
> directory so allowing fast navigation up and down the directory tree).
Read that: directory hierarchy. Spatial mode is a metaphor of objects
and places.
What I agree in all this discussion is that there should be an easy way
to touch the browser mode gconf key. But not with a label like "open in
the same window", but "use browsing mode"
--
Franco Catrin L. TUXPAN
http://www.tuxpan.com/fcatrin
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